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Speaker 2: The following episode contains references to suicide. If you or
Speaker 2: someone you know is in need of help, please contact
Speaker 2: the Suicide in Crisis Lifeline by dialing nine eight eight.
Speaker 2: Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 1: It's twenty thirteen, school starting at the University of Colorado, Boulder,
Speaker 1: and everything's happening on the hill, new people, new classes, parties,
Speaker 1: the cl fair. There's frisbee on Farrin Field, the CU
Speaker 1: Buffalo's football season is just getting started, and there are
Speaker 1: mounds of pizza boxes and beer cups piling up outside
Speaker 1: the frat houses. CU Boulder wasn't Alana's first choice. In
Speaker 1: her senior year of high school, she begged her mother
Speaker 1: to let her go to Wyoming Catholic College, a traditional
Speaker 1: leading school with an outdoor leadership program. Father Dave even
Speaker 1: wrote her recommendation letter, but at the last minute, Alana
Speaker 1: decided to stay local. She was already really involved with
Speaker 1: Saint Thom's, which happened to be the center of all
Speaker 1: things Catholic at CU Boulder, and Saint Thom's was in
Speaker 1: full bloom. They host a welcome barbecue for all the
Speaker 1: new students, and there are all these really nice, good
Speaker 1: looking college grads hanging out and getting to know all
Speaker 1: the freshmen. Everyone's talking about this conference that's happening in
Speaker 1: the winter called Seek. Alana signs up.
Speaker 3: Welcome to see this.
Speaker 4: Z.
Speaker 1: You're ten thousand Catholic students from across the country convening
Speaker 1: in Nashville for a week.
Speaker 5: Take out people from.
Speaker 6: All over the big class in places like Nebraska.
Speaker 1: In Colorado, there are giant stadium messes, men's and women's sessions. Women,
Speaker 1: you have to have a posse of women.
Speaker 7: Women need a possey Why because women hate each other.
Speaker 3: As a guy, you want the lord and you want
Speaker 3: the lady. So I want to lay a foundation of
Speaker 3: top ten tips you can do to date your soulmate.
Speaker 1: Incredible music, dozens of young priests ready to hear your confession.
Speaker 1: Nuns walking around arousing call to change the world.
Speaker 8: Would you please consider the world is waiting for you,
Speaker 8: is waiting for you to live in divine intimacy, authentic friendship,
Speaker 8: and this ability to live in the little way and
Speaker 8: the talks. I began a career in fashion and in modeling.
Speaker 7: I was on America's Next Top Model.
Speaker 1: Stories of wandering through the empty promises of modern culture
Speaker 1: into a life of real fulfillment.
Speaker 6: And yet I was completely not at peace.
Speaker 2: I wanted more, and the only person who could give
Speaker 2: me more was Christ.
Speaker 1: But the highlight of the week is an evening of worship,
Speaker 1: music and prayer. The priest, in his gold vestments, burns
Speaker 1: incense around the altar, and the worship team builds up.
Speaker 1: The emotion Isn's And in this crowd of scared and
Speaker 1: excited young people, all kneeling, eyes closed, tonight offers a
Speaker 1: glimpse of what life could be like with thousands of
Speaker 1: others who believe what you believe, who found the answers
Speaker 1: to the confusion and uncertainty about the future that you've
Speaker 1: secretly felt, And you begin to wonder if maybe Heaven
Speaker 1: feels something like this from Tenderfoot TV. I'm Simon kent
Speaker 1: Fung and this is Dear Alana. Part five piece of
Speaker 1: the pie.
Speaker 9: I answered the door. I should have probably put two
Speaker 9: and two together, but I know that she was in
Speaker 9: trouble and that it wasn't good. So I remember she left,
Speaker 9: and I was crying, crying, crying, and just really confused.
Speaker 1: When the police and nun first arrived at their door,
Speaker 1: Alana's younger sister, Sophia had no clue why they were there.
Speaker 1: She didn't know that Alana had told a friend about
Speaker 1: her plans to die by suicide, But how did she
Speaker 1: get here? These plans didn't come from nowhere? What else
Speaker 1: was going on while she was in college besides her therapy?
Speaker 1: I decided to extend my trip in Boulder. Before I
Speaker 1: can go forward in the story, I have to go
Speaker 1: back to her college years, those pivotal years that led
Speaker 1: up to this breaking point. Today, I'm walking through Alana's
Speaker 1: old neighborho by the CU Boulder campus. I want to
Speaker 1: see for myself the places where Alana would have spent
Speaker 1: most of her time. On this weekday, students are recovering
Speaker 1: from last night's party, walking home from their frat houses.
Speaker 1: My introverted self couldn't imagine living here, and then I
Speaker 1: see it. Saint Thoma's, the church that Alana would sneak
Speaker 1: out to, where she first met Father Dave, where she
Speaker 1: found her therapist, and when she went to college, this
Speaker 1: church became her home away from home. I walk a
Speaker 1: little further and find myself in front of a building
Speaker 1: that says Saint Thomas Aquinas Catholic Center. There are students
Speaker 1: coming in and out of the building, one of whom
Speaker 1: holds the door for me, and as I walk in,
Speaker 1: I'm expecting to see some sort of worship space, but
Speaker 1: instead I enter what looks like a full fledged coffee shop.
Speaker 1: It's got a kind of target decor with a woodpaneled
Speaker 1: accent wall and geometric wallpaper. I look up at a framed,
Speaker 1: hand lettered quote that says all I need today is
Speaker 1: a little bit of coffee and a whole lot of Jesus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so what kind of sandwiches?
Speaker 10: Oh?
Speaker 1: There we are? So how did all this come to be?
Speaker 1: This religious haven on a secular campus. The man behind
Speaker 1: all of this, who's been leading Saint Thom's for the
Speaker 1: past twelve years, is a priest named Father Peter Mussett.
Speaker 1: He's in his mid forties, which is young for a
Speaker 1: Catholic priest. He's affable and enthusiastic, and you can hear
Speaker 1: the joy in his voice when he talks about his work,
Speaker 1: like in this interview with the campus newspaper.
Speaker 5: I love being a priest and bowler.
Speaker 1: Like I cannot tell you.
Speaker 5: I've talked to somebody in there like, oh, you're a
Speaker 5: Catholic in They're like, oh, my cathedral is the woods,
Speaker 5: And you know what's great is it's wonderful. Then talk
Speaker 5: to me about how you experience God within the woods,
Speaker 5: Like there's all these really cool starting places that you
Speaker 5: can have within Boulder.
Speaker 1: You get the picture, an outgoing guy who seems engaged
Speaker 1: with students. Joyce remembers the first time she saw Father
Speaker 1: Peter when Alana brought her to Mass at Saint Thom's.
Speaker 6: I'd never seen a priest look like him. Sometimes he
Speaker 6: had have a man bun. Sometimes he'd just have curly,
Speaker 6: curly hair, long birkenstocks. He just was cool.
Speaker 1: In the articles I read, that cool man bun look
Speaker 1: earned Father Peter the nickname the Hipster Priest. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't just his appearance that was appealing.
Speaker 6: When I first heard him give a homily, I couldn't
Speaker 6: believe it like it was so funny dream and he
Speaker 6: made the homily understandable and then he brought humor into it.
Speaker 6: So I loved it, and I had friends come and
Speaker 6: hear him like I just was like, this is the best.
Speaker 1: In so many ways. Father Peter is exactly the kind
Speaker 1: of priest I dreamt of becoming young, dynamic orthodox. He's
Speaker 1: appointed as administrator for Saint Thom's in twenty eleven when
Speaker 1: Alana is still in high school, just as Father Dave,
Speaker 1: Alana's spiritual director, gets reassigned from Saint Thom's. Joyce remembers
Speaker 1: wondering about the reassignment, and.
Speaker 6: That's when I met and met with Father Peter because
Speaker 6: I just trusted him so many times I met with
Speaker 6: him and I was like, do I have anything to
Speaker 6: be worried about? Why is he made to leave?
Speaker 1: She recalls Father Peter reassuring her that Father Dave's leaving
Speaker 1: is not a big deal, how they were both roommates
Speaker 1: and seminary and she had nothing to worry about, and
Speaker 1: that Father Dave was leaving for other personal reasons.
Speaker 9: And I was like, why are.
Speaker 6: They getting him many help? And he said, no, he's
Speaker 6: just going to go to another parish because the prishioner's
Speaker 6: here got upset with some things, and I was concerned,
Speaker 6: but I trusted Father Peter, and then I thought, thank God,
Speaker 6: he's leaving.
Speaker 1: With Father Dave out of the picture and Father Peter,
Speaker 1: the hipster priest as the new sheriff in town. Joyce
Speaker 1: was relieved. She felt like Alana was now in good hands.
Speaker 1: What she didn't know was that Alana had a different
Speaker 1: idea of what would be good for her. Back at
Speaker 1: the University of Colorado, Alana is thriving. She's joined the
Speaker 1: collegiate for his bee team, and she makes a ton
Speaker 1: of new friends At Saint Thom's. She's become close with
Speaker 1: Father Peter, who she calls FP, and kind of dives
Speaker 1: into it all at the Catholic Center, she's volunteering at
Speaker 1: the Saint Thom's Adoration Chapel, becoming a leader for their
Speaker 1: fall retreat, and organizing students every week to give sandwiches
Speaker 1: out to the homeless. What she seems most excited about
Speaker 1: is moving off campus into an apartment with four other
Speaker 1: Catholic girls, where they do weekly rosaries and Bible studies together.
Speaker 4: Freshman year Zeal Martyrdom sainthood. Here are all the things
Speaker 4: I'm grateful for. The missionary disciples, talking to Laura and Carissa,
Speaker 4: sending up the emails mass this morning, signing the lease goal,
Speaker 4: make disciples win, build send through missionary service to the homeless.
Speaker 1: A lot is clearly in her element. I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm starting to get a pretty good picture of what
Speaker 1: her college experience was like. Saint Thom's seems to provide
Speaker 1: a kind of alternative to the mainstream activities found at
Speaker 1: a party school like CU. It's like, instead of going
Speaker 1: to the bar crawl on Friday, let's hang out at
Speaker 1: the Saint Tom's coffee shop and talk about our walk
Speaker 1: with God. I would have totally signed up. Up until college,
Speaker 1: my faith was very private and devotional, but I soon
Speaker 1: stumbled into a more intellectual side of Catholicism, aside that
Speaker 1: equipped me with debate level knowledge so that I could
Speaker 1: defend the church and win arguments. I discovered an entire
Speaker 1: industry of books and conferences dedicated to this ALTA gets
Speaker 1: a good dose of this at the Nashville conference you
Speaker 1: heard at the beginning, where Father Peter brings a contingent
Speaker 1: of ninety CU students after a reverend stadium mass. The
Speaker 1: music dies down and everyone settles in. The speaker takes
Speaker 1: the stage.
Speaker 11: The worldview that we're going to attack today is relativism.
Speaker 1: So the word with me. Relativism a philosophical concept that
Speaker 1: most of the students have probably never heard of.
Speaker 11: It's the idea that there is no truth. The truth
Speaker 11: is relative to what each person believes. So it does
Speaker 11: away with this idea that there's objective truth.
Speaker 1: You can think of relativism as license to do whatever
Speaker 1: you want.
Speaker 11: Now, most people are not relativists when it comes to
Speaker 11: things that are scientifically verifiable, and no one's going to say,
Speaker 11: you know, two plus two is five for me, that's
Speaker 11: my truth. Don't impose you four in my five, You
Speaker 11: closed minded Catholics.
Speaker 1: He's ripping on his critics.
Speaker 11: But we're relativists when it comes to everything else. So
Speaker 11: how do I make a moral decision? Definis is a marriage?
Speaker 11: Anything like that? We think that's stuff that people make
Speaker 11: up for themselves. There is no such thing as truth.
Speaker 1: Hitler said that even Hitler was a relativist. That puts
Speaker 1: it into perspective.
Speaker 11: See, if your God lets you do whatever you want,
Speaker 11: your god is you If there's no objective truth out
Speaker 11: there about morals. Where is your moral compass? Point?
Speaker 1: It points to the all powerful question what feels right?
Speaker 1: I remember hearing talks like this and feeling like I
Speaker 1: couldn't trust myself. Only God was objective, and it was
Speaker 1: my duty to defend him against a wider culture that
Speaker 1: was dead set on attacking us for our beliefs.
Speaker 4: We know there is persecution that is occurring against.
Speaker 11: Christians surrounded by this culture that has so much craziness
Speaker 11: in it.
Speaker 1: How do we live in a culture like this? You
Speaker 1: a culture of moral relativism? I want to talk about that.
Speaker 1: With the culture against us, what were we to do?
Speaker 1: The answer was to fight back with objective truth. And
Speaker 1: the way to discover that objective truth was through the
Speaker 1: superpowers of the Church, which Catholics believe has a direct
Speaker 1: and historical line to God, kind of giving us the
Speaker 1: cheat codes to the video game of life, and it
Speaker 1: seems to have worked. Some of the most famous scientific discoveries,
Speaker 1: like the Big Bang were discovered by Catholic priests. The
Speaker 1: Universal Declaration of Human Rights was kickstarted by a Catholic philosopher,
Speaker 1: and you know who else is Catholic? Six of the
Speaker 1: nine US Supreme Court justices.
Speaker 11: We started the hospital system, started the university system. Maybe
Speaker 11: you know large social service breader on the planet.
Speaker 1: Heck, even Stephen Colbert teaches Catholic Sunday School. God must
Speaker 1: be backing this right, so you can understand how drawn
Speaker 1: I was to this church and why young college students
Speaker 1: like Alana would also be captivated. The talk ends with
Speaker 1: a call to be a saint.
Speaker 11: You see, you, Becoming holy is not just about you.
Speaker 11: We live in a world that's forgotten its way. It's
Speaker 11: forgotten that life has any purpose, and the answer God
Speaker 11: sends is you.
Speaker 1: I picture Alana hearing this and feeling like He's talking
Speaker 1: directly to her. She too wanted to be holy and
Speaker 1: perfectly united with God, a saint to save those around her,
Speaker 1: and by her sophomore year, Alana was well known throughout
Speaker 1: the Saint Tom's community. With her quiet devotion and commitment
Speaker 1: to the homeless, it was obvious she was on a
Speaker 1: fast track to becoming a saint. Even younger students had
Speaker 1: heard of Alana Chen's religious reputation before meeting her. But
Speaker 1: what really got everyone talking was her friendship with a
Speaker 1: boy named Micah. Here's Alana describing him on her timeline.
Speaker 4: Micah met at Saint Thom's first guy to be close
Speaker 4: to gentlemen, adventurous, sensitive, joyful, vulnerable, healthy boundaries, soulmate, partner
Speaker 4: in sainthood.
Speaker 1: Micah's tall, dark, and handsome. He goes with Alana to
Speaker 1: visit the homeless under the bridge on Sundays. They both
Speaker 1: love hiking the flatirons by the campus together. And what
Speaker 1: makes Micah special is that, like Alana wanting to become
Speaker 1: a nun, Micah wants to become a priest. This gets
Speaker 1: everyone talking and the are they aren't they? Speculation of
Speaker 1: these two good looking saints in the making makes them
Speaker 1: a kind of Catholic power couple. But Micah and Alana
Speaker 1: are both figuring out their vocations how God is calling
Speaker 1: them to serve the church, which means picking from one
Speaker 1: of three options marriage, becoming a priest or a nun,
Speaker 1: or staying single.
Speaker 4: In the fall, the Dominican sisters visited our campus. It's
Speaker 4: hard to describe, but after hearing their vocation stories, my
Speaker 4: heart was burning. The sister said, even though she wanted
Speaker 4: to be married and have children, it was okay. That
Speaker 4: made her vocation even more pure. I asked Jesus to
Speaker 4: make my vocation pure, so I asked for the desire
Speaker 4: to be married and have kids. In the next couple
Speaker 4: of weeks, my best male friend asked me on a date.
Speaker 4: We both liked each other, and even though I was
Speaker 4: asserting to be a sister and he a priest, I
Speaker 4: said yes.
Speaker 1: Alana's older sister, Carrissa, remembers that first date.
Speaker 12: It was like a big deal at the ten house
Speaker 12: that she was going on this date.
Speaker 4: And he picked her up and we had all met him.
Speaker 9: He's super nice, he's handsome.
Speaker 1: They finished their date that evening at the chapel at
Speaker 1: Saint Thom's praying together.
Speaker 4: I liked him a lot.
Speaker 9: He was very holy.
Speaker 4: This increased my desire for marriage, but also my desire
Speaker 4: to be a sister. As we dated, I constantly felt torn.
Speaker 4: I asked many people for advice, but no one would
Speaker 4: tell me what to do. Then I understood that Jesus
Speaker 4: was leaving me the free choice.
Speaker 1: Alanna's facing the dilemma of whether to become a nun
Speaker 1: or to marry. This might seem like she's getting ahead
Speaker 1: of herself with Micah, like they're only going on dates.
Speaker 1: Why she's thinking about marriage. But for Catholics, when it
Speaker 1: comes to discerning your vocation, it's really important to get
Speaker 1: it right. Picking the wrong one is like missing out
Speaker 1: on what God wanted you to be, so the stakes
Speaker 1: are high. I remember the many journals I wrote asking
Speaker 1: God to help me discover my vocation. There was nothing
Speaker 1: more I wanted than to follow God's will perfectly, and
Speaker 1: everything in me was pointing to the priesthood. For me,
Speaker 1: marriage wasn't something that had ever crossed my mind, but
Speaker 1: the thought of becoming a priest, not having a family
Speaker 1: of my own, and serving God's family full time filled
Speaker 1: me with a deep sense of peace and joy. Father William,
Speaker 1: my spiritual director, told me that these were all signs
Speaker 1: of a vocation to the priesthood. Not every young Catholic
Speaker 1: man feels this way. Alana takes her vocational discernment very seriously.
Speaker 1: She dates Micah and also attends retreats with Mother Teresa's
Speaker 1: nuns in New York to see which one speaks to
Speaker 1: her more.
Speaker 4: Please answer me, God, hear my cry when I call
Speaker 4: to you. Father told me not to even think about
Speaker 4: my vocation until the last day of my retreat with
Speaker 4: the sisters already, it's all I think about, should I
Speaker 4: listen to Father Dave my spiritual director? Or should I
Speaker 4: look and ask you in prayer about my vocation.
Speaker 1: It's been nearly three years since Father Dave has left
Speaker 1: Saint Thom's, so why is Alana still referring to him
Speaker 1: as her spiritual director? What no one knows is that
Speaker 1: Allnna has been in touch with Father Dave behind her
Speaker 1: mother's back this entire time. Alana's mother had forbidden her
Speaker 1: from meeting with Father Dave unsupervised when she was a
Speaker 1: young teen, but by college, it's clear that Alana has
Speaker 1: been ignoring her mom.
Speaker 6: Well, who are you on the phone with Alana? And
Speaker 6: then she'd finally tell me. She wouldn't tell me right away,
Speaker 6: and then I was really mad because you're not supposed
Speaker 6: to be talking to him anymore. And she's like, it's
Speaker 6: on the phone, it's not in person. She'd get upset.
Speaker 1: While other teenagers might rebel by drinking and breaking curfew,
Speaker 1: Alana's form of rebellion is talking to her priest on
Speaker 1: the phone. I managed to get a hold of the
Speaker 1: phone they're talking about. Her family was able to unlock it,
Speaker 1: but Joyce has never been able to look through it
Speaker 1: in any depth. It's too painful. I ask her if
Speaker 1: she would be okay if I did, Please guard it
Speaker 1: with your life. She says, there's a lot on the phone,
Speaker 1: and it takes me nearly two weeks to comb through it.
Speaker 1: I discover that Alana and Father Dave were communicating even
Speaker 1: more than what Joyce was aware of, especially by text.
Speaker 1: They text almost weekly, sometimes several times a week, and
Speaker 1: as I read through their conversations, I discover more layers
Speaker 1: to their relationship. They joke about their Meyers Briggs personality types.
Speaker 1: Alana is an infp and Father Dave shares how hard
Speaker 1: it's been with all of his reassignments. He sends her selfies,
Speaker 1: shares the occasional food pic, and they schedule times to
Speaker 1: talk on the phone. He asks her how bad her
Speaker 1: temptations are on a scale of one to ten. She
Speaker 1: replies eight. Then, at the end of her junior year
Speaker 1: at cu Alana texts him Happy Father's Day. You are
Speaker 1: a good father. I love you. He replies, thank you.
Speaker 1: I love you too. I was looking for you on
Speaker 1: Facebook since I joined. You're very smart for not being
Speaker 1: on it. Father Dave and Alana's text messages look more
Speaker 1: like two friends talking rather than an older man and
Speaker 1: a young woman seeking spiritual direction. While there are no
Speaker 1: hard and fast rules to spiritual direction, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: where the line is. And even though I was close
Speaker 1: with my spiritual director, it never looked quite like this
Speaker 1: With a new community of religious peers, people like Micah
Speaker 1: and others at Saint Thom's who are as invested in
Speaker 1: their faith as Alana is. Alana tries hard to keep
Speaker 1: up with her old friends, but mixing friend groups would
Speaker 1: prove to be complicated. Here's me again, the Frisbee Captain.
Speaker 12: One of the more defining things that year was my
Speaker 12: friend Kelsey, who was dating this other girl at the time.
Speaker 12: There was a holiday party that Alana had invited, myself, Kelsey,
Speaker 12: and Kelsey's partner too. It happened to be at Peter
Speaker 12: Mussett's house.
Speaker 1: Peter Musset is father Peter, you know, the hipster priest.
Speaker 1: After the party, ME picked up on something Kelsey and
Speaker 1: their partner were really uncomfortable.
Speaker 12: At that point, I had realized, like, maybe it's best
Speaker 12: to not be in the same spaces as like Alana's
Speaker 12: church friends, because of the way that like, you know,
Speaker 12: Kelsey feels uncomfortable and Kelsey feels judged. And at that point,
Speaker 12: I think neither of us had known that Alana was gay.
Speaker 12: So I really don't know if Alana, you know, brought
Speaker 12: the three of us there to just like make those
Speaker 12: spaces a little bit safer, I'd like to think. So
Speaker 12: I'd like to think that Alana wanted us there.
Speaker 1: I asked joy Alana's best friends in kindergarten, what she
Speaker 1: remembers about Alana's new church friends.
Speaker 10: So.
Speaker 7: I remember one time this girl said to me, like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 7: it's great that you go to church, you know, but
Speaker 7: it's just kind of like you have one piece of
Speaker 7: the pie as a Protestant and Catholics.
Speaker 1: We have the whole pie.
Speaker 7: And I just I like knew. I was like, what
Speaker 7: that's no. So she never did.
Speaker 1: Did she ever try to convert eat it?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 7: She did not. People that she was friends with did.
Speaker 1: While Alanna never tried to convert Joy or any of
Speaker 1: her old friends for that matter, her new friends weren't
Speaker 1: making a great impression on her old friends or her mom.
Speaker 1: Here's Joyce recalling a time when Alana had her church friends.
Speaker 6: Over There was that one time when I was in
Speaker 6: my house and I overheard them talking about abortion should
Speaker 6: be murder one. And I remember going in the dining
Speaker 6: room and I didn't want to embarrass alone or anything,
Speaker 6: but I was, like, you really think that? Like I
Speaker 6: was like murder one. I said, do you know how
Speaker 6: some people suffer for after they have an abortion? For years?
Speaker 6: They feel bad, especially if they can't have children. And
Speaker 6: it's not an easy thing, but murder one.
Speaker 1: First degree murder, punishable in some states by death. A
Speaker 1: lot OF's new friends become yet another source of conflict
Speaker 1: between her and her mom.
Speaker 6: I remember one day dropping her off to that apartment
Speaker 6: complex and we had a discussion and it turned into
Speaker 6: a debate, which and she started crying and told me,
Speaker 6: you think I'm weird And I don't know if it
Speaker 6: was about a Republican Democrat thing or again with the abortion,
Speaker 6: and she was crying and she ran on my car,
Speaker 6: and I remember and I thought, I can't I can't
Speaker 6: lose my daughter. I have to stop.
Speaker 1: Joyce rationalizes her decision to back off.
Speaker 6: She loves these friends, and she's good. She looked what
Speaker 6: she does like, she's so good. She helps the poor,
Speaker 6: the homeless. She loves God. I didn't know though, this
Speaker 6: other thing.
Speaker 1: I didn't know, this other thing, the secret.
Speaker 4: Sunday once to practice, should not have gone, need to
Speaker 4: let go of Ultimate, so many desires and temptations. It
Speaker 4: made me regret choosing this college. Sophomore year, core leader
Speaker 4: at Saint Thom's, but lonely, unsure, burning out, overworked, dishonest
Speaker 4: with God, ashamed, struggling with same sex.
Speaker 1: Attraction, Alana's clearly having a hard time with her SSA.
Speaker 1: In an email she writes to Father Dave during her
Speaker 1: sophomore year, she tries to distance herself from these temptations. Remember,
Speaker 1: up until now, she hasn't told her friends or her
Speaker 1: family about any of this.
Speaker 4: This week has been filled with grace, but it was
Speaker 4: also kind of rough. Two of my girlfriends from high
Speaker 4: school Ultimate recently came out and our inner relationship together.
Speaker 4: Then today I'm told that another girl, a friend at
Speaker 4: Saint Thom's, is struggling with homosexuality. Although she remains chaste,
Speaker 4: she deals with the loneliness by drinking and partying, and
Speaker 4: she's growing further and further away from God.
Speaker 1: And in the midst of this, she journals about her
Speaker 1: relationship with Micah.
Speaker 4: One day, I was reading a book about Saint Terrez,
Speaker 4: but I was so distracted by the situation I was
Speaker 4: not paying attention to the words. I stopped reading and
Speaker 4: began to pray, Lord, if you are giving me the
Speaker 4: free choice, then, searching the depths of my soul, I
Speaker 4: cannot date Micah anymore. I choose to give my heart
Speaker 4: to you. I ended my prayer and began to read
Speaker 4: where I had left off. The words read Here on earth,
Speaker 4: love proves itself by free choice. Jesus wants to be chosen,
Speaker 4: he wants to be preferred. Then I knew I had
Speaker 4: made the right choice. We stopped dating. He was fine
Speaker 4: since he wanted to be a priest.
Speaker 10: It's so funny the parallels, you know, like I always
Speaker 10: thought that, you know, I used I tried dating girls too,
Speaker 10: you know. I always felt like there was moments where
Speaker 10: I was like, but the vocation to the priesthood is
Speaker 10: what my calling is, and so I can't And so
Speaker 10: I kind of I kind of tricked myself into being like,
Speaker 10: I'm choosing this other thing that's you know, that's my calling,
Speaker 10: and I can't date those girls. But you know, really,
Speaker 10: I wasn't.
Speaker 1: Into it, into it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's tortuous.
Speaker 13: It's tortuous.
Speaker 1: Interspersed between scholarship applications and writing assignments are a bunch
Speaker 1: of her notes titled Healthy Sexuality. It's a kind of
Speaker 1: summary of the Catholic teaching on sex.
Speaker 4: Healthy sexuality. Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person
Speaker 4: in the unity of his body and soul. Sex is
Speaker 4: designed for both union and procreation. Sex as God intended
Speaker 4: is for one man and one wife in a committed,
Speaker 4: lifelong marriage relationship. Masturbation turns his energy in on oneself.
Speaker 4: Masturbation is a symbol of selfishness and loneliness. Masturbation, fornication, adultery,
Speaker 4: contraception do not image God's free, total, faithful, and fruitful love.
Speaker 1: For a lot of people, these restrictions seem out of date,
Speaker 1: But for many Catholics, the church's job is precisely to
Speaker 1: not change, because God's truth doesn't change. He's not a relativist. Remember,
Speaker 1: as we learned from the conference speaker. By the time
Speaker 1: I get to Alana's notes on homosexuality, it's not surprising
Speaker 1: what I find with.
Speaker 4: Same sex attraction who act out sexually can never become
Speaker 4: one body with their partner, since their sexual organs cannot
Speaker 4: be united and there is no possibility of creating another
Speaker 4: person through a one flesh union, This could only amount
Speaker 4: to mutual masturbation. Same sex attraction is disordered and not
Speaker 4: according to God's plan.
Speaker 1: For young people trying desperately to follow God's plan, this
Speaker 1: characterization of homosexual relationships as physiologically incompatible with this plan
Speaker 1: is impossible to ignore. It burrows deep into our souls,
Speaker 1: feeling the belief that how we experience relationship is from
Speaker 1: God's perspective broken, and so we hide these feelings behind
Speaker 1: a red line we must never cross because we can't
Speaker 1: afford to lose God. We return to the speaker stage.
Speaker 1: This is from another Catholic conference Alana attended organized by
Speaker 1: the Franciscan University of Stupenville.
Speaker 3: When when people hear this, they think, well, well, what
Speaker 3: does this?
Speaker 13: Where does this leave me? Though?
Speaker 3: Like I have these attractions?
Speaker 1: Like what does this mean?
Speaker 3: Like I can I can never have a family, Like
Speaker 3: I can never get married. Do you trust God's love
Speaker 3: for you to the extent that you will abandon your
Speaker 3: own will in order to follow him? Or do you
Speaker 3: trust your own will for yourself more than you trust
Speaker 3: in God? And you'd rather abandon him than your own will.
Speaker 1: Alana takes all of this to heart. It's as if
Speaker 1: she has to do everything possible to prove that she's
Speaker 1: not abandoning God.
Speaker 4: My Jesus, there is a lot to do. Marry in
Speaker 4: Consecration started yesterday, So here comes the Renunciation of the World.
Speaker 4: Five to Sick scholarship essays to finished by Thursday. Five
Speaker 4: page paper due soon. Buffalo awakening. I need to make
Speaker 4: name tags and buy snacks, decorate boxes. I need to
Speaker 4: continue fundraising. Lord, I need your help. Confession consent to
Speaker 4: impure thoughts and same sex attraction. I let my weakness
Speaker 4: scare me and forget to trust in God her protection.
Speaker 4: Always neglecting homework, always eating too much, always picking at skin,
Speaker 4: always thinking about how others will think of me, not
Speaker 4: sleeping enough, fall asleep, praying. I have haunting, impure dreams.
Speaker 4: They lead to despair and fear. Junior year, moved back
Speaker 4: home to save money. Overworked, still two jobs, not doing
Speaker 4: well in school, compulsive masturbation, attracted to every woman I
Speaker 4: lay eyes on. My life is in shamples. I just
Speaker 4: want to be clean and free and pure.
Speaker 1: Midway through her junior year, Alana tears her acl during
Speaker 1: a frisbee tournament and needs surgery. It's as if her
Speaker 1: body is giving out under all the pressure. She moves
Speaker 1: back home to recover.
Speaker 6: When she got home, they had told me to get
Speaker 6: an ice machine, that you should put ice around the clock.
Speaker 6: So I decided I'm gonna stay on the couch with her,
Speaker 6: and like we had a big ice bucket thing on
Speaker 6: the porch, so you know, I could refill the ice machine.
Speaker 6: And I just stayed up all night with her. I
Speaker 6: probably dozed off, but she didn't seem good.
Speaker 1: A lot of seems really down. Recovering from surgery is
Speaker 1: no fun. So her friends stopped by to cheer her up.
Speaker 6: I remember her friends kept visiting. Micah came and he
Speaker 6: cleaned all like he was cleaning and bringing her food,
Speaker 6: and I remember thinking, oh, he's so nice. And Katie,
Speaker 6: her friend from Frisbee, came in joy and everybody would
Speaker 6: visit her.
Speaker 1: But one evening while her mother is with her on
Speaker 1: the couch, A lot of share is what's really been
Speaker 1: going on.
Speaker 6: I just kept staying a sleeping on the couch with her,
Speaker 6: and then she told me she was attracted to women,
Speaker 6: and she told the priest, and she told me, you
Speaker 6: know about a masturbation was immortal sin, and it was
Speaker 6: lifted all those years and it was back and that
Speaker 6: school was round the clock with the environmental design. And
Speaker 6: then she couldn't keep it up with the church hours
Speaker 6: and the homeless hours, and she was like falling apart.
Speaker 1: The stress from everything was too much and Alana couldn't
Speaker 1: keep it in anymore. Joyce isn't sure what to make
Speaker 1: of any of it. This completely blindsides her.
Speaker 6: You know, And I was just shocked, like I was,
Speaker 6: you know, I was just in shock.
Speaker 1: Joyce describes how horrified she felt that Alana had been
Speaker 1: carrying the secret all on her own, and she tries
Speaker 1: her best to comfort her daughter. But as much as
Speaker 1: Alana seems to be opening up by finally coming out
Speaker 1: to her mom, she's not sharing the whole picture. She
Speaker 1: doesn't tell her about what she's been learning in therapy.
Speaker 1: From this next passage, I find it looks like the
Speaker 1: wedge between Alana and her parents that began with father
Speaker 1: Dave had been continuing long after he'd left.
Speaker 4: Peter told me that I should not identify by my temptations,
Speaker 4: for the cause is much deeper than I could imagine.
Speaker 4: The cause was the doubt and isolation from a young age.
Speaker 4: I did not know God. From a young age. I
Speaker 4: was isolated because of my sexual addiction. I felt so
Speaker 4: much shame and hopelessness because of my parents. I could
Speaker 4: not relate to them or be known by them. They
Speaker 4: were too strong.
Speaker 1: And I was weak. The hipster priest, the one who
Speaker 1: ironically Joyce trusted, was the person who'd been reinforcing these
Speaker 1: parental theories. And as I look at Alana's therapy dates
Speaker 1: with Kate, I realized that it was under Father Peter's
Speaker 1: leadership that Saint Thom's was referring this kind of therapy
Speaker 1: to the students. The stress leading up to Alana's acl
Speaker 1: tair would be compounded with another year of therapy where
Speaker 1: Alana tries desperately to fix herself in order to become
Speaker 1: a nun or a wife, to get to the root
Speaker 1: of her mother wound that she's told made her gay.
Speaker 1: By now, it's becoming clear that this intoxicating sense of
Speaker 1: belonging to a community with shared black and white values,
Speaker 1: while comforting, might have drove Alana into me, deeper into
Speaker 1: a profound shame, A shame that's all over Alana's journals,
Speaker 1: a shame eating away at her sense of self and
Speaker 1: mental health, A shame that no one else could see.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it's this shame that led to Alana's suicide scare
Speaker 1: in her senior year at CU. As her younger sister,
Speaker 1: Sophia explained, a police officer and a nun came to
Speaker 1: the Chen home and rushed Alana to the hospital. Sophia
Speaker 1: was left confused and crying after learning that Alana had
Speaker 1: threatened to kill herself. When Joyce finds out, she races
Speaker 1: to the er.
Speaker 6: I get there to the emergency room, there's a couple
Speaker 6: of nuns, and then there's father Peter on his knees
Speaker 6: praying over Alana. She's crying, and I'm just stunned. I'm like,
Speaker 6: what the hell is going on here?
Speaker 13: I will follow you, follow you where I find you.
Speaker 1: Mine next time on dear Alana.
Speaker 7: So she said, When I think of home, I realize
Speaker 7: I have very few people left. I'm so grateful to
Speaker 7: have you and that you never gave up on me.
Speaker 7: I'm finally learning that to give up on.
Speaker 1: Myself how Alana's struggle is interrupted by a friendship that
Speaker 1: develops into something more.
Speaker 13: I will follow You ever since you touched on? Thank You.
Speaker 1: Dear Alana was created, hosted, and written by me Simon
Speaker 1: Kentfung and is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association
Speaker 1: with a Slept Audio and the Center for Independent Documentary.
Speaker 1: It was produced by Lauri Puliski, who also composed the music.
Speaker 1: Executive producer are myself, Donald Albright, and Payne Lindsay. Our
Speaker 1: supervising producer is Tracy leeds Kaplan. Additional music by Makeup
Speaker 1: and Vanity Set, Sales and distribution by iHeartMedia. Our voice
Speaker 1: actor is Alana Rabor and our credit song I Will
Speaker 1: Follow You is Bye to Loose. Show notes and resources
Speaker 1: can be found on our website Dearlana dot com. If
Speaker 1: you enjoyed this episode, please take time to follow the show,
Speaker 1: rate and review various.
Speaker 13: In notion suit Monton So High, Keep Me Away Away
Speaker 13: from Long.
Speaker 1: Dear Alana is an eight part series released weekly. If
Speaker 1: you can't wait until next week, subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus
Speaker 1: so you can binge the entire higher series right now.
Speaker 1: Add free head to Apple Podcasts or tenorfoot plus dot
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